St Sophia in North Nicosia, North Cyprus: Surviving Through the Centuries

The cathedral was originally quite grandly decorated with statues, a painted screen, choir stalls and paintings in the vault itself. However, the ravages of invasion by the Genoese in 1373, the Mamelukes in 1426 and two earthquakes in 1491 and 1547 all took their toll on the building and its contents.

When the Ottomans converted the cathedral to the Aya Sofya Camii in 1570, they stripped out all the contents, especially any remaining representations of the human form, so that the only remaining statuary in St Sophia’s is now outside. (A couple of tombstones still remain under the mosque’s brightly colour carpets.) Despite further earthquakes in the 18th century, the old building still stands strong today. The mosque was only renamed the Selimiye Camii mosque in 1954, in honour of Selim II, the sultan at the time of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.

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